Tucking myself in close to her warm, soft body, I don’t hesitate. I don’t have the patience my brother does. A day. That’s how long it’s been since shit hit the fan. Since Remy fucked up. Since Lavinia was beneath me and I was inside of her. Since we found out about the hit, about Maddox, the jump. It swirls in my head over and over, so many chances for everything to go wrong.
My heart pounds in my chest, hard and drum-like—beating in warning. I stroke her neck with my thumb. Her skin is so soft. So fragile. I skate my palm down her body, grazing the peak of her nipple as it descends, pressing into her ribcage, her belly. When I reach my destination, I can feel the heat of her through her panties, but that’s just background noise to the static that fills my chest when I look at her.
Sy says, “Do it, Nick.”
She’s lifeless, sightless, and silent, just like she’d looked in my head when I saw that blinking dot, floating over the void of the water.
I flinch against the memory, but it’sright fucking here. It’s in the blankness of her eyes, the scant part of her lips, the way the lines of her face look as though they’d frozen in a moment of unspeakable fear.
I kiss it away.
Her lips are soft against mine, and when I lick out to taste her, I can feel her breath, hot and quick. “It’s me,” I tell her, wondering how cognizant she is under there. Is she trapped in a dream, or is she just trapped in her body, listening to me and Sy talk about this? I’m not sure which is worse. Pressing the tips of my fingers right into her clit, I whisper, “Come back to me, Little Bird.”
If I didn’t have my lips on hers, I wouldn’t have heard the sound she makes. It’s small and quiet, delivered on the crest of her exhale, and there’s fear within it. Confusion.
A plea.
My eyes dart to my brother’s and he nods encouragingly. His fingers are still on her skin, rubbing small circles on her wrist with his thumb, as if he’s afraid to do more.
I’m not afraid. I’m emboldened and that impulse I’ve had all day–to poke her just to see her twitch–surges through me like a lightning bolt. It drives me forward, crushing my mouth to hers as my hand plunges into her panties.
I use my knee to wrench her thigh open, parting her legs for me, andfuck, I can feel her already getting wet. I slick my fingers with it, sliding one into her tightness as my thumb works her clit. Her mouth is slack against my tongue. I force it through her lips anyway, feeding her a rough, gritty, demanding sound, not even thinking of how this must look to Sy.
Then again, no one knows me better than him. “Easy, Nicky.” He says the words like he’s talking to a wild animal, because Sy sees this for what it is. This sudden, aggressive urgency isn’t because I’m horny. It’s because a Lavinia who doesn’t kick, scratch, or strike back is just… so goddamnwrong. “It takes a while. Be patient.”
But I see in my periphery that it’s working, the fingers of the hand Sy is touching, still resting on the pillow beside her cheek, give a strong twitch. And when I look at her, she’s looking back, her eyes staring right into mine.
They’re fuckingscreaming.
Not even Sy can stop me now. Maybe for him, fumbling in the dark to keep his touch quick and clinical, it took a while. But nothing about the way I shove her panties down her thighs is clinical. I ruck up the shirt to get a rough handful of her tits, already rolling between her legs.
“Nick,” Sy hisses as I wedge my hand between our bodies, pulling my cock, excruciatingly hard, from my boxers.
I grab her thigh, hiking it up around my hip, and then line myself up. A shudder rolls through her, muscles flexing weakly. Holding her gaze, I push inside, slow and slick. The last time we were together, she asked me to make love to her, but this is beyond that. So fucking beyond.
Her mouth falls open, chest expanding on a gasp as I sink the length of my dick into her. Tipping my forehead to hers, I watch her watch me back, understanding now. She’s in there. She’s so warm, so tight, so goddamn perfect–everything I think and dream about. I linger there, letting my cock expand inside of her, stretching her muscles. I want her body to remember me. To know that I can be the one pulling her free from the darkness. To know that I’m never again going to be the one to put her there.
She gives a long, slow blink back.
“That’s it, Little Bird. Follow me back.”
Suddenly, her fingers move.
It’s jerky and slow, but her fingers seek Sy’s, threading between them, grounding the two of their bodies together. Well, three, since I’m buried inside of her. It doesn’t even matter that her forehead screws up, like she’s in pain, because I know exactly how to ease it.
My cock punches into her, desperate and needy. She gasps at the invasion, but her hips roll, rising back to meet me. I pull out slowly, deliberate, before pushing in again. Her eyes are on mine, tired but bright, worn but alive, and her other hand finally finds some strength.
She uses it to pull me down.
This time, her lips move against mine. The sound she makes is so guttural, so wanting, that it’s all too easy to let go. To punch my hips into hers. To trail my lips hungrily down her neck, capturing the peak of a nipple. The sheets beneath her pillow get mangled in my fist as I clutch the fabric, slamming into her with a force that makes her whimper.
I don’t mean to use my body as a weapon–not here, not when we’re like this–but I still find my body surging into hers. Powerfully, relentlessly, like a threat. As if I can break whatever chains are holding her with nothing more than the snap of my hips. It’s wild and mindless, and when I catch sight of Sy beside us, still half-reclined in the bed, I see the shocking rawness of it reflected back at me in his stare.
His mouth is slack, pupils so blown that they’re pools of black.
Beneath me, Lavinia comes to life. First her hand on me, nails digging divots into my nape. Then she lifts her knee, spreading herself wider for me, and I gladly take it, grinding in deeper, until there’s nothing between us but the building slickness of sweat. On the bouncing jostle of my thrust, her neck moves, head digging back into the pillow as her eyes screw shut. A tear squeezes free from the corner of her eye and runs down her temple. I catch it before it can fall, retracing its wake with the point of my tongue.
“Nick,” she gasps, never letting go of Sy’s hand.